Steel Sakura

He stared at her a moment longer, then nodded a little, his eyes never leaving hers. After gentle prompting from the girl, he somehow managed to whisper "...Sakura..."

Yolei stared at him. "But... that’s a girl’s name! You can’t be called Sakura!" His uncomprehending look showed her that he really didn’t understand her meaning well. Then hesitantly he held forth his closed fist, thumb upwards. As Yolei stared at this pale, long fingered hand, he opened his grip. The cherry blossom remained in his palm, uncrushed, uncreased, and as strangely delicate as his hand. He showed her the extraordinary flower, smiled a little and said in the same quiet voice: "...Sakura."

And this time, Yolei didn’t dispute his unusual choice of name.

After he had gone, she leaned against the fence and looked up at the sky. Now it was night, and she was alone again. And, alone, she was free to wonder and think. She was finding it hard to believe what she had just seen, who she had just met. After all, how many young men went around with a steel cherry blossom embedded into the palm of their hand? She slid down the fence until she was sat on the ground, and rested her hands on her knees. Unbidden, one of her hands turned itself over. She looked at her own palm, almost as pale as his had been, and wondered what had happened to him to have that flower planted into his hand. Where had he come from, she wondered as she stared at her own palm as uncomprehendingly as he had stared at her. That boy had no memory of his name, and he didn’t appear to know where he came from or why he was walking down the road, and for some reason Yolei felt incredibly sorry for him. She wondered if he had a family, people who would miss him when they realised that he was gone from wherever he had come from in the first place. Or, and here her imagination took a fanciful turn, was he some kind of secret experiment, escaped from a lab where he was cruelly treated, to be free and lost in the world? She decided that she would never know and sighed, shutting her eyes a moment. Then, feeling still a little sad, she stood and walked home, back to her own waiting family.

They were eating dinner in front of the television when the news came on. No one in Yolei’s family was normally too interested in the news; so they sat talking until Yolei happened to glance at the screen. Taken aback, she cried out in shock, making her sister stare at her and ask her what was wrong. Unable to remove her eyes from the screen, she just pointed to the article on. Her mother turned the volume up, and Yolei listened in stunned surprise to the droning voice of the reader. Her sister glanced sidelong at her. "Why are you so interested in this?" Yolei just shushed her, listening.

"And now back to the main article in tonight’s programme. Several police cars were mysteriously destroyed in a freak accident today as they rushed to the scene of an explosion in the warehouse area of Kineyo. Several witnesses have reported seeing a strange young man in the area, and some have even reported that this unknown youth might have been the actual cause of the incidents." The scene cut to an interview with a distraught-looking young woman.